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By Root 6891 0

’s fundamental carelessness, but possibly also the aftertaste of their meeting in Manhattan two weeks earlier. Although Walter had been very happy to see his old friend again, he’d been haunted afterward by Richard’s insistence, in the restaurant, that Lalitha repeat the word fucking, and by his subsequent insinuations about her interest in oral sex, and by the way that he himself, at the bar in Penn Station, had proceeded to badmouth Patty, which he never let himself do with anybody else. To be forty-seven and still trying to impress his college roommate by denigrating his wife and spilling confidences better left unspilled: it was pathetic. Although Richard had seemed happy enough to see him, too, Walter couldn’t shake the old familiar feeling that Richard was trying to impose his Katzian vision of the world on him and, thereby, defeat him. When, to Walter’s surprise, before they parted, Richard had agreed to lend his name and likeness to the crusade against overpopulation, Walter had immediately called Lalitha with the great news. But only she had been able to savor it with complete enthusiasm. Walter had boarded the train to Washington wondering if he’d done the right thing.

And why, in his e-mail, had Richard mentioned the beauty of Lalitha and Patty? Why send his best to them but not to Walter himself? Just another careless oversight? Walter didn’t think so.

Down the road from the Days Inn was a steakhouse that was plastic to the core but equipped with a full bar. It was a ridiculous place to go, since neither Walter nor Lalitha ate cow, but the motel clerk had nothing better to recommend. In a plastic-seated booth, Walter touched the rim of his beer glass to Lalitha’s gin martini, which she proceeded to make short work of. He signaled to their waitress for another and then suffered through perusal of the menu. Between the horrors of bovine methane, the lakes of watershed-devastating excrement generated by pig and chicken farms, the catastrophic overfishing of the oceans, the ecological nightmare of farmed shrimp and salmon, the antibiotic orgy of dairy-cow factories, and the fuel squandered by the globalization of produce, there was little he could ever order in good conscience besides potatoes, beans, and freshwater-farmed tilapia.

“Fuck it,” he said, closing the menu. “I’m going to have the rib eye.”

“Excellent, excellent celebrating,” Lalitha said, her face already flushed. “I’m going to have the delicious grilled-cheese sandwich from the children’s menu.”

The beer was interesting. Unexpectedly sour and undelicious, like drinkable dough. After just three or four sips, seldom-heard-from blood vessels in Walter’s brain were pulsing disturbingly.

“Got an e-mail from Richard,” he said. “He’s willing to come down and work with us on strategy. I told him he should come down for the weekend.”

“Ha! You see? You didn’t even think it was worth the bother of asking him.”

“No, no. You were right about that.”

Lalitha noticed something in his face. “Aren’t you happy about it?”

“No, absolutely,” he said. “In theory. There’s just something I don’t . . . trust. I guess basically I don’t see why he’s doing it.”

“Because we were extremely persuasive!”

“Yeah, maybe. Or because you’re extremely pretty.”

She seemed both pleased and confused by this. “He’s your very good friend, right?”

“Used to be. But then he got famous. And now all I can see are the parts of him I don’t trust.”

“What don’t you trust about him?”

Walter shook his head, not wanting to say.

“Do you not trust him with me?”

“No, that would be very stupid, wouldn’t it? I mean, what do I care what you do? You’re an adult, you can look out for yourself.”

Lalitha laughed at him, simply pleased now, not confused at all.

“I think he’s very funny and charismatic,” she said. “But I mostly just felt sorry for him. You know what I mean? He seems like one of those men who have to spend all their time maintaining an attitude, because they’re weak inside. He’s nothing like the man you are. All I could see when we were talking was how much he admires you, and how he